


you were there, you took my hand

by cold_nights_summer_days



Series: Anchor [5]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Anxiety, Comfortember, Day Four, Gen, Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker Has Anxiety, Precious Peter Parker, Press Conferences, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, brief mention of skip, im still here yall!!, nothing graphic and never will be, very very brief i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:27:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27381913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cold_nights_summer_days/pseuds/cold_nights_summer_days
Summary: day four: anxiety - Peter's nervous about the upcoming press conference to announce that Tony is his new legal guardian.-----
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: Anchor [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1996039
Comments: 9
Kudos: 182
Collections: Comfortember 2020, The Best Irondad/Spiderson Fics, The Best Peter Parker Whump Fics





	you were there, you took my hand

**Author's Note:**

> helloooooooooooo y'all. happy september 4th. it's currently 02:39 while I write this note in my drafts, and I'm tired, so if any of this is spelled or formated wrong I am super sorry but just leave a comment and I'll get it fixed right away <3
> 
> enjoy!
> 
> p.s. this takes place probably around 2-3 months after the end of the main story, but once every fic is up I'll also be publishing an official time line.

Peter could hear the reporters on the other side of the door. Tony was saying something to him about what he was going to say, but to be truthful, Peter wasn’t listening. It was difficult to focus on much else besides the pit of anxiety in his stomach.

Today was the day that they announced to the whole world that Tony was his legal guardian. After a fiasco last week that left the public wondering just what in the hell Tony was doing with the missing kid who ran away from Skip Wescott, Tony thought it best to address the issue head on before his name was plastered everywhere for kidnapping Peter Parker.

“Did you hear me?” Tony said, pulling Peter back to the present. Peter’s eyes refocused from where he’d been staring off in the distance behind Tony’s head.

“Not really . . . I’m sorry,” Peter answered truthfully, slowly shaking his head. Tony sighed, but smiled at him nonetheless.

“It’ll be fine, I promise. You don’t have to answer questions if you don’t want to, or if you don’t want to talk, then I’ll just tell everyone you’d prefer not to speak today. It’s just a formality so that we can control the narrative from here on out.”

Peter nodded. They’d been over this this morning, and the night before, and last week when Tony brought up the whole idea of having a press conference in the first place. (Pepper had been the first one to see the headlines “Tony Stark Caught with Missing Teenager?”)

“Are you ready?” Tony asked.

“Sort of,” Peter said with a nervous laugh.

“I was nervous for my first press conference, too, but I’m sure they’ll all love you so there isn’t much to worry about.”

With that, Tony opened the door to the room filled with reporters, and Peter had to fight the urge to run the other direction. Peter walked in and took his seat first, staring out anxiously at the sea of reporters. None of them had cameras (flash photography had been banned due to Peter’s new sensitivity to flashing lights), so most of them just looked like normal people.

Tony sat down beside him, and even that small action made Peter feel more comfortable. Anxiety still settled in his stomach like a rock, but it was slightly more bearable now. Soon this would be over, and they would go home and probably watch movies the rest of the day.

Peter sat quietly, toying with the sleeve of his suit jacket while Tony read from the script given to him by the PR department. Every once in a while, Tony glanced down at him to make sure he was doing okay, and Peter gave him a small nod.

When the time for questions came, Peter decided that he was okay enough to answer a few, so long as they weren’t too invasive. He passed on the first one, which was a reporter asking him why he ran away from Skip Wescott’s foster home. Even just hearing the man’s name was enough to make his skin crawl, and Tony must have noticed, because he took the mic and declared that Peter wouldn’t be answering that one.

They both knew Peter couldn’t tell the truth about that one, not really. First, it made Peter incredibly uncomfortable. Second, their first public press conference was not the time to be making sexual assault accusations, especially regarding a minor.

Luckily, the next question wasn’t so bad.

“What’s it like living with Mr. Stark now?” One of the reporters asked. She was short with brunette hair, and if not for Peter’s enhanced vision, he wouldn’t have been able to see that her name tag declared her name to be Ms. Roberts.

“It’s different, for sure,” Peter answered. “I don’t really know how to describe it. I’m really grateful, obviously, that he decided to take me in. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for him. He really – he really saved my life. In a lot of ways, I guess.”

“What kind of ways?” Another reporter called out.

“Well, um, the first time we met I was about to be stabbed, so he definitely saved me there,” Peter laughed nervously, mostly because the aura in the room was starting to feel too heavy for him. “And then he saved me from almost dying, _again_ , a few months later. Now I’ve started therapy and I’m going to school instead of trying to scrounge up something to eat every day. I don’t have to worry about whether I’m going to eat that day or whether I’ll have somewhere warm to spend the night.”

Peter knew that he had started to ramble, but the words didn’t want to stop.

“And really, that’s just a short list of things. I could go on about how I know that I’ve always got someone in my corner, now, or how I’m not scared of bouncing from house to house while I wait to age out of the foster system. Things aren’t perfect – nothing really ever is – but he saved me from a whole world of hurt that I wasn’t even aware that I might have had to endure. So I guess, long story short, he kind of saved me in every way.”

Peter might have missed the way Tony had started to tear up, but the reporters certainly hadn’t. Nearly a minute passed before the next question, which this time was directed at Tony.

“How does Pepper Potts feel about this?” Someone near the back asked. Tony cleared his throat before answering and did his best not to sound hostile. Peter tensed beside him while he answered, because he’d accidentally overheard one of their arguments on the topic.

“She’s not thrilled, to say the least. But since we aren’t together anymore, it wasn’t her decision to make. I’ve made that very clear to her, and I’ll make it very clear to anyone else who would like to argue about it with me,” he said. “Are there any more questions?”

“We only have time for one more,” The moderator announced. A reporter in the front row barely managed to speak before the rest of the room.

“Will this decision affect your career as Iron Man moving forward?” He asked. Tony paused for a moment, not expecting such a question. To be honest, he hadn’t thought much about that. He knew things were going to have to change, of course, he couldn’t go on week long missions anymore without someone there to stay with Peter (and as of right now, Peter only trusted him).

“Yes, of course it will,” Tony answered after a beat. “I definitely need to think about how this would affect both of us moving forward, but it doesn’t mean that I’ll be hanging up the mantle for good. I don’t know if that’s quite the answer you were looking for, but that’s all I’ve got.”

The reporter nodded and took down notes on his small notepad. Tony had briefly thought about that sort of stuff, but not in detail and not enough to give a better answer to the question.

The moderator stayed behind to make some closing remarks to everyone that had attended, but Peter and Tony left as soon as they could get away with it. There wasn’t much reason for them to sit there once the main event was over.

“You did great, kiddo,” Tony said, leading him and Peter towards the elevator so they could finally start their movie marathon.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Pretty sure you did better than I did. You must be a natural at these things.”

“I don’t know if I’d say I’m a natural. I was anxious the whole time.”

“I doubt anyone else picked up on that. Besides, you did so well that I’ll even let you pick what we watch first today.”

“You always let me pick what we watch first. I don’t think that has anything to do with how well I did or didn’t do just now.”

“It’s directly related, thank you very much. You always do well, therefore, you always get to pick what we watch first.”

Peter laughed, and Tony smiled, and damnit, Peter was right. Tony was never going to admit that, though. Because yeah, it totally wasn’t related to how Peter did today at all. He always let him pick first because he didn’t even care what they watched so much as the fact that they watched it together. And wasn’t that what really mattered in the end? It didn’t matter what they watched, or even when they watched it, because it was a shared memory, and that meant something. It meant _family._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> If you want to read more, check out/subscribe to the series!
> 
> [Here's my tumblr! ](https://funky--lil--spider.tumblr.com/)  
>    
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> 
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> 
> p.s. (you know who you are) see what I did there, eh? see what I did there?


End file.
